Large quantities of Pumice- Stone on an Atoll. 607 



height. AYhile their base is bathed by the sea, their upper 

 portions, which are about 20 feet in diameter, present the 

 spectacle of luxuriant grass, brushwood, and one or two fruit- 

 bearing cocoa-nut palms, so that the two crags looked like 

 two gigantic flower-pots attached to the reef. They seem to 

 be all that remains of an island which Ocean had first thrown 

 up, and was now busy wearing away. 



Another geological peculiarity is the occurrence of heaps of 

 pumice-stone. These are found about the size of walnuts over 

 the entire interior of the island of Faole at those places which 

 the swell of the waves cannot reach even in the stormiest 

 weather, where they occur in such immense quantities (though 

 there are no traces of them on the sand or shingle of the 

 actual beach) that we may take for granted that the convulsion 

 which brought them here must have occurred in times long 

 gone by, the more so as this superposed pumice-stone exer- 

 cises a marked and obvious influence upon the vegetation of 

 the island. So far as its soil consists of heaps of fragments of 

 coral and mussel-shells, the cocoa-nut palm reigns almost 

 alone, whereas as soon as the pumice-stone region is reached, 

 there begins an exceedingly luxuriant growth of lofty forest 

 trees with huge trunks and umbrageous foliage, and an aston- 

 ishingly abundant flora of species apparently peculiar to these 

 Atoll islands. The English naturalist Jukes, who accom- 

 panied Captain Blackwood on his survey of Torres Straits, 

 found beds of pumice along the entire east and north coasts 

 of Australia, over an extent of 2000 miles, and under numer- 



